Fade to Black
by kerlin
Summary: [NS, GS] 'Close your eyesWe're moving still.'


**Rating:** R**  
Summary:** "Close your eyes/we're moving still."  
**Spoilers: **None.  
**Disclaimer:** I think we all know they're not mine. I'm just borrowing them for some good old-fashioned angst.  
**A/N:** I've been threatening to write this for months; it comes from a very painful little scene in Bed of Roses where I got a Nick/Sara vibe that wouldn't let go. I kept putting it off, and putting it off, and then sometime in the middle of an epigraphy course it took on a life of its own and demanded to be written.

Thanks to eli for the beta and the laughs.

The summary comes from the same song as the opening lines, Tom McRae's "You Only Disappear." Brilliant, brilliant man. Go. Listen.

Clarifications: This is all there is to this story, and it doesn't really have anything to do with Bed of Roses other than I got some thematic ideas while writing BoR. They're very definitely not part of the same universe. Sorry for the confusion!

* * *

_Baby, I'll call up a storm  
Keep you safe from harm  
But you only, you only disappear._

- Tom McRae, "You Only Disappear"

~*~

Never, in any of his dreams of kissing Sara, had her lips tasted like tears.

Nick jerked his head back when the salt touched his tongue, and braced his hands against her cheeks, unsure as to which of them he was holding up. The tears continued falling, spilling silently from wide dark eyes, now running over his fingers and dripping down the back of his hands. She just looked at him, lips twisted against silent sobs.

This was the part where he played the good old boy, pulled her against his chest and rocked her quietly while she cried it out. Tucked away the male hormones as best he could, recited baseball stats until his eyes crossed, and woke up to a stiff back, a soggy shirt, and no Sara next to him on the couch.

She had other plans.

In a move that he fleetingly thought was worthier of Catherine, she seized control of his mouth again and bit down, hard, on his lip. Her lips muffled his grunt of surprise, and now the salt that he tasted was blood. He was going to have to tell Warrick that he'd walked into a door when he showed up at work that night with a fat lip.

Those long, slim fingers were under his sweater, skimming his ribs, sliding the fabric up and over his head, and there was a split second of doubt - is this really happening? - before he caved and took the initiative.

It was the wrong decision. He'd known that before he even made it. And still, he made it anyway, unexpectedly reveling in the self-disgust and the descent into darkness. It wasn't something he'd ever let himself do before, not really, not upright Nick Stokes. He got the feeling this wasn't a decision Sara made often either.

And so here they were, two fucked-up approximations of human beings, both trying to fill the missing pieces with each other. There wasn't enough of her to go around; too much of it was too caught up in Gil. He had no illusions that the face behind her eyelids - screwed shut, hiding her from the world - and the name caught in the back of her throat were any other than same ones that had sent her to the break room where he'd found her, staring listlessly into the distance.

But he would take what he could get, and now he was the one unbuttoning her shirt clumsily, digging his fingers into his skin while she moaned and sunk her teeth into his shoulder.

And there they were, naked on his couch in the broad daylight, and he was driving into her so hard the edges of his vision went black while she writhed underneath him and bit her lips against calling out someone else's name.

He had no words, just strangled cries. What would he say, anyway?

"Hey, Sara, I know it's not really me you want, but I've been half in love with you for the past three years, so if a pity fuck is all I'm ever going to get, I'll take it with a smile."

Too sarcastic. Not worthy of him, or at least of the person everyone seemed to think he was.

"Listen, Sara, I'm here for you, okay? Next time Gil forgets you exist, just come on over. We'll even make it to the bed, maybe."

When had he become so cynical?

She arched underneath him as she came, breath hissing out through clenched teeth and he followed her a few seconds later. And then everything was normal again, or a shoddy approximation thereof; coughing and rattling of the dying air conditioner, rough fabric of the couch, sticky sweat and fluids.

Cold air against damp skin as Sara curled as far away from him as she could get on the narrow couch.

They still didn't speak, and the nape of her neck patterned with strands of dark hair tempted him, so much so that he stood before he could press his lips there. It would have been too out of place, too tender. Gentleness and romance had nothing to do with what had transpired between them, and if he couldn't stop her tears, he at least didn't want to create fresh ones.

Keeping his eyes carefully away from hers - they would find an apology there, and the last thing he wanted was confirmation of what he already knew - he dressed as best he could, and draped the blanket from the back of the couch across Sara's half-naked form. She didn't move, and he swallowed hard and tasted blood when he tongued his already swelling lip.

When he left his bedroom after five hours of tossing and turning, the blanket was neatly refolded on the coffee table and there wasn't even a dent in the cushions of the couch where she had been.


End file.
